Is PAD THAI Legit Thai Food? Or Is It Fake?

this is American Thai food in Thailand but there's a reason for it that's really good that's really really good wow or like a nice casserole maybe circa 1960s 1950s hamburger helper when the world says Thai food they're really talking central Thai food pad Thai green curry mango sticky rice all straight from the heart of Thailand but behind the fame is a deeper richer story let's get into it in today's funro food we're going to be exploring central Thai cuisine now if you have ever had Thai food in a westernized country you have probably had a Bangkok curated version of Central Thai cuisine they have some familiar dishes here at Sit and Wonder but I'm telling you they're at least half a notch to a notch better than you're used to i'm telling you guys there's a lot of food in Bangkok that you cannot recognize but you can recognize the food here but they still cook it different this is the most American Thai restaurant in Thailand let me tell you guys why if we're talking about any food that made it abroad to a western country to represent the Thai cuisine it is Bangkok style central Thai food and that's what they serve here at Central at uh Sit and Wonder we've got a Thai style som now they do a Eissan style but this one actually has no crab sauce and it has no fish sauce in it so it's going to be very very easy to eat and very very platable for foreigners if I don't like fermented fish I don't like fermented crab I'm going to be okay with that because that's a Bangkok style moving on we got the chicken wings i think this is something that you may or may not see at your local you know suburban Midwestern any town USA spot that's delicious and I'm always amazed at how much Sit and Wonder tastes like America guys moving on we've got pineapple fried rice if you guys know about the history of this dish it's a little bit interesting because this is a Bangkok Royal Thai dish that sort of made it into the American lexicon so Thai people do eat pineapple fried rice but it's really a derivative of royal Thai cuisine which was a more sweeter more refined like sophisticated less rustic style of food that was invented for Thai royals bangkok just happens to be the economic and political hub of Thailand dude had more of the nut profile and this was super good this is like probably one of the best pineapple fried rices I've ever had but to be fair it's not a dish I order very often because I'm not a fang just kidding moving on guys we've got some stewed pork ribs here with the the pepper this almost like looks like something that's like kind of like Chinese I would guess you know you find this on Thai menus in America often times because listen when Thai people come to America they're probably going to build a menu uh based around Central Thai cuisine however they may add regional dishes to represent the popular things from around the country especially because at the end of the day the name of the game is to make money and sell out wow i am still stunned by how much Sit and Wonder tastes like an American Thai restaurant actually it's actually unbelievable guys this is rada almost like a beef chow fun right in padu is but this is the more gravy like version and this is like really popular here in Bangkok you know not everybody orders it like it's kind of like I would say definitely back home in America people they have this on the menu but people are going to get the dry style more i just wanted to show you guys something a little bit different we could have got a version of pad CU here that looks like literally 10 out of 10 to the one you grew up with next to your high school this is American Thai food in Thailand but there's a reason for it now this dish is something you probably haven't seen unless you have a very interesting like Thai restaurant in your city this is actually stewed gravy chicken with the uh Chinese sausage right here the lap churn so we going to try this cuz this this is actually my first time having this and I love chicken lob churn with mushroom wow guys central Thai food has a ton of influences from all over we're talking about Indian Muslim influences Royal Thai influences Chinese influences it's really like the centerpoint cuisine cuz you know like northern food it tastes very mountainous northeastern Ean food it's very pungent southern food is like hyper seafood hyper coconut this is sort of like a triangulation well balanced mix of everything okay so my two favorite things on the menu today were actually the Thai style sam tongue that doesn't have any of the fish sauce or crab sauce the most Americanized thing you have ever seen me do on this channel and pick the pineapple fried rice this was incredible and uh they didn't serve it to me in the pineapple it's also a royal style thing but you can get that here as an option um listen guys this is Thai American food in Thailand but for a very good reason everybody thinks that Central Thai food is only about curated Bangkok Central Thai dishes but we are going to a noodle spot next called Suko Thai this is a region in central Thailand that's not Bangkok and they are famous for dry noodles noodles with broth and sweet palm sugar noodles i guarantee you you have never seen a sukot Thai noodle restaurant in America before in your life let's check it out what you are looking at is the world famous Mayun Road Sukot Thai Noodles right now and people in Bangkok used to travel to the Sukot Thai region for 2 three hours just to get these noodles but now in 2025 there's so many chains that have come in serving this i mean it's still something that unless you're really like Thai like I would imagine a lot of the foreigners and tourists that come to Thailand have not had this before it almost looks like a dry fur mixed with a Chinese noodle mixed with something else from the mountains of Eunan of course it's encompassing everything sweet sour spicy salty it's very difficult to describe these noodles you just have to have the sukotai noodles yourself this is the world famous basic one i would tell you that this is like almost the least bombastic way you can experience true central Thai flavors because you got everything all five senses in there sweet sour spicy salty savory and it's all mixed together at the bottom of the bowl and they give you pork balls of course like we said moo yeah moving on this is their second most popular dish and it has a ton of pork crackklings right here big pork crackklings small pork crackklings chashu one tons thin egg noodles but super Thai noodles always have to be thin whether they're rice or they're one ton they always have to be thin as you can see a lot of Chinese influence in central Thailand just generally in the food guys this is a one ton tom yam broth two things you never thought you would see combined because it doesn't make sense but of course here in Thailand with so much like haka diio Cantonese influence of course with the local Thai influence no wonder if you just take a look around here guys there are so many people on their lunch break here and this is what they would go for sukot Thai noodles of course I added a chicken leg in there to get some more protein this reminds me of honestly chicken soy stewed soy sauce chicken legs my dad would make them and by the way guys soy sauce in Thailand is cu and in Kantese is sea so same word uh this is kan bong guys you can get kamong a sweet version you can get a savory version this may remind people more of a bun sail or a stuffed crepe but this is their version of kanong here in the sucotone and we're going to throw some of this palm sugar sauce on it and one thing that you'll notice is the food uses a lot of coconut shredding in there and it uses a lot of palm sugar good you got lime you got bird's eyee chilis in there you've got cucumbers and a ton of palm and coconut sugar this is a dish I never had before this is called sucatai pork toast now a lot of people have had Cantonese shrimp toast various shrimp toast from around the world this is pork toast so I think that we're so privileged to be in this era of globalization because globalization doesn't just mean international cuisines it means hyper provincial regional cuisines making it overall as well like I said I was talking to a lot of Thai locals they used to drive to Sukatai just to have these meat but now there's like five chains of Bangkok i'm going to give this pork toast this my five out of five banger today and last but not least we've got a grass jelly popular all around southern China Southeast Asia lightly sweet not too sweet perfect way to end off this meal i'm telling you guys Central Thai food amazing right everybody's familiar with it the Westernized style the Bangkok style the royal style but try Sukot Thai which is a central Thai region not Bangkok all these workers can't be bomb a lot of you guys are going to be familiar with what we're having in the video today because we are covering central Thai a lot of Bangkok cuisine and there's no better place to start off than Aani this is actually a high-end central Thai spot located here in Ecami all right you guys we are at Aani which is a little bit of a what high-end lower high-end modern fusion central Thai spot a lot of people in America have had central Thai food but it didn't look like this right yeah yeah this this I would say but this is shrimp this is like shrimp tot sort and you know what you guys will notice with the sam tum here is the sam tum is way uh has no crab juice or fish juice in the like Bangkok style here we've got what scabs with mango salad yeah some sort of Yeah and then over here what is this it's similar to basalid but not really quite that it's like some sort of other fish i don't really know the name in Thai what is this dish because from what they were telling us this pla salmon is not a traditional central Thai dish but is popularly eaten in Bangkok yeah so it's has some sort of Japanese influence as well this is a little bit more like for sure Americans will be familiar with this right yeah absolutely and uh you know what I noticed is a lot of central Thai stuff has a ton of coconut because of the proximity to the Chao Pria River this is called Gengho wine which is it looks kind of Indian a little bit in my opinion and you eat it with Kongim all right so we got to talk about this tomyongun because probably in America people have had to yongun but this has gigantic coconut slices in it yeah we got to talk about the tacos first so this is we call phong which is like some sort of like this candyish treat um very sweet and this is actually shrimp actually the the red one right here so right we have savory bong and sweet kamong yep this is like a mochi this is definitely some sort of influence like some sort of fusion for sure salted egg mochi style also wrapped in like a sort of like an ice cream thing moving on fried bananas this is a coconut ice cream and I believe believe you just like Yeah dip it into like that and then there you go i had to I saw the fried bananas i was like this is not going to taste better later m this is pai which I believe instead of kaio they got ku uh you know this is which is not really the traditional kaoy and this is coconut ice cream and obviously you got the traditional mango not going to lie I still prefer this fermented catfish fundle full but you know close enough you got to add in the the veggies too so it's kind of sweet is the sauce spicy that's central Thailand is about a five out of 10 this is really interesting i never had this before i I don't know if this is like fully the hyper traditional way to do it but they minced this up and then they fried the hell out of it now we got yam saman i think that these are really interesting dishes because these are dishes that popped up in the past what two decades in Bangkok this comes uh I believe from the Japanese influence in Bangkok there's a lot an even more obvious fusion dish that I've seen at like the pizza company is like Tom Young spaghetti there you go so this is Stanwan what you would do is you add it with the komin so you pretty much do this all right guys i'm going to break with tradition guys do not get mad with me i'm There was a little sumen man kenomin with the green curry that's really good that's really really good moving on tom yum everybody knows this around the world right we got a shrimp tom yum wow you know what's really interesting about this one is the broth isn't as coconuty but then there's giant pieces of actual physical coconut in there yeah I'm not going to lie as an American maybe some more it maybe almost too sour for me this is a coconut cream on the inside fong fong yep you know what's really interesting about this dish is there actually some Portuguese roots to this not fully but like some Portuguese influence to this kind of boring with it the salted egg yolk coconut ice cream inside of a coconut mhm m that was really good that might be some of the best coconut ice cream I've ever had the actual ice cream was wrapped in a coconut so it's like a mochi ice cream i'm going to give that a five out of five damn all right let's go back to this with cot my goodness that that would be coated ice cream and would you agree with me that central Thai food in Thailand in Bangkok at least has the most levels like you could get a super cheap version of central Thai food all the way up to like super expensive yeah absolutely easy this is fried banana medipus fried banana in the in the salted egg yolk high level technique a lot of people don't know this dish was invented in 1940 almost like combat a lot of the Chinese influences right right right oh my goodness this is pad thai in Thailand i only had this like two times since I've been here i did not just eat that like a royal at all by the way definitely more farang kind of like a little bit sweeter than I would usually eat last but not least with the bi so this is uh what this coconut ice cream right and I noticed the fried beans on here delicious really good what do you think of this high-end version of central Thai food i mean I think it's pretty legit i think there's a lot of fusions involved obviously you can't get traditional super traditional unless you go outside of like not in this area but overall man as someone who grew up eating all these things I give it like out of five like a good 4.5 out of five for sure it was really delicious guys but like we said we got more different levels on the socioeconomic spectrum of central Thai cuisine to uh explore we're going to go to uh Suko Thai which is like uh central Thailand not Bangkok so we've got that coming up as well and dude I love doing these videos i learned so much about Thailand yeah continuing our exploration of central Thai cuisine we are at Mr m Noodles and Echimai this is famous in the Tongor Echimai area for having the cheapest but high quality central Thai street foods i think a lot of these workers are Burmese they cook it delicious it's got 4.9 out of five on Google reviews let's take a look inside man as you can see it's almost like a street stall that's been brought inside but one of the things they do advertise for a lot of you know the Western Japanese Chinese customers is that they don't use a lot of like cheap oil let's take a look at what we got here lang this pork bone soup guys this dish is only 5 years old this is paneang curry guy chicken green curry as you can see here this is more authentic than America because you have large coagulated pork blood cubes along with vegetable right here you get a fried egg on rice here tom Kagai coconut uh lemongrass curry tom Yamun but this one's way more trendy 2025 Bangkok style cuz we got mama's noodles in there got the seafood pack i know that when they see Chinese people they immediately be like "Yeah you Wanda Lang." Because uh at Jod Fair they sell this dish so much to so many Chinese tourists because uh it just reminds us I think of Tajang or something like that you know like Tajjangu all right you guys i'm going to try this M wow it's all good i asked for some seu some soy sauce they brought some ja it's all good wow oh my goodness you know the interesting thing is like central Thai food it's such a mix of so many different regions like you know Kam Buang the sweet crispy coconut hams that are really trendy in Bangkok moving on from one of probably the newest central Thai dishes which was the lang we got one of the older ones this is paneang curry uh with chicken it looks a little bit different but I would say in America it pretty much looks this way but in America they'd use like maybe more press meat because a lot of people are sensitive to dark meat in America hocanup but no spice dark meat guys can't beat it i would say the rue feels like definitely got a little bit more spices and like vanilla reddish like how it would look in America good next up we've got Genko Watt that is this green curry right here with chicken mushrooms in there obviously this gourd uh I'm I'mma leave this for the cameraman right here ah I just don't want to wow i'll try to like describe this authentic coin coconut curry another iconic signature central Thai dish tonka this one we got the chicken skin in there uh as you can see gigantic piece of ginger root lot of lemongrass this is probably another western favorite like we said most of the food that your average person's familiar with from their suburban Thai restaurant or several suburban Thai restaurants is central Thai it's definitely got the coconut in there but less creamy like it's got the coconut milk in there but not like almost condensed coconut milk obviously there's similarities but Thai food in America has been shifted to fit more of the American palette next up a lot of people are familiar with Pakapra this is Kapow Tailay and that means seafood i would definitely normally be not get stir-fried seafood from a street side stall but you know Mr m Noodles it splits the difference between sitown restaurant and street food so I I'll accept it wow i can tell why this got 4.9 out of five on yo next up we've got this eggla omelette it's called Kaiou now you can get this on the street but I'm going to tell you they're going to use a ton of oil i've gotten it before with the office workers it does taste good they just got a little bit different standards here so you know we going to more go with this one uh even though it may not be as like in a way like could or could not be as tasty you know what I do got some of this fish sauce this definitely tastes healthier this is a good healthy egg shout out to Mr m Noodles you know like you said they trying to bring the street food flavor that fangs and foreigners like what are we scared of all right guys i've busted out the ch spoon and the takup the chopsticks i must be a human personification of a takup um like we said here despite the price I mean this one was more expensive this was like 180 B which is like $6 or something like that but look look at that almost like a mini lobster with a It's good it's a good shrimp so this tomy goon right here not only you got things that are rare for America like the pork patty i've only seen this at Pranacon in New York City but we got the mama's noodles wow they really nailed it relative to the area that we live in and that we eat you know film a lot of these foods in this is relatively cheap probably on the low middle high on the low end but they still delivering when you come to Thailand you're going to get a little bit less creamy than America and more sour because that's the flavor profile out here more tamarind well I'll tell you this here are my top three here at Mr m Noodles Central Tag Cuisine the Lang I think it's popping off for a reason it's a trend for a reason like AS6 i'm g say the Tom Yum with the Mama's Noodles also trending for a reason and last but not least I think just because I was a little skeptical of the seafood capra I'm going to put this that's in my top three but honestly just the fried egg on rice totally valid moving on to our next spot now all right you guys wrapping up this central Thai video we got to stop by to play which means cheap and good and this is a spot that a ton of foreigners come to a ton of office workers come to and like we said it's almost like diner food but diner food in Bangkok is central Thai so today we're going to be getting pad seu and pack probably one you know two of the most famous dishes that people eat for lunch specifically pack-a-prow listen guys there were so many more central Thai dishes we could get into obviously we are in Bangkok right now that has an abundance of central Thai restaurants i will be putting a lot of those other dishes into like Thai Chinese videos or things like that obviously there's dishes that are debatable that could go into either one like pad seu su is actually soy sauce like cu but that's more how like diio people say it you know a lot of people from chaos shanto area came to Thailand 300 years ago so pad means stir fry seu is the sea the soy sauce and uh as you you could see here we could dress it up on our own with the sugar the bird's eyee chilis little bit more of these chilies maybe that was too much but you know you know how it goes and then of course the office worker favorite or the favorite worker just any worker would always go to this ultimate comfort food pad capra capra means holy basil pad again to stir fry we got to get into this guys m wow this is almost like the Bangkok or the Thailand hamburger guys especially with an egg on top what do you do or like a nice casserole maybe circa 1960s 1950s hamburger helper i used to love Hamburger Helper growing up in fact I bemoan the fact that it's not popular anymore and you know the funny thing is in New York the most popular sandwich over the past 10 years or the eight years was the chopped cheese this is almost like a chopped cheese without the cheese deconstructed so it goes to show you people just really like hamburger helper chopped cheese and pack moving on we've got the like we said the pad seu this is like a favorite dish that's a little bit more Chinese you could eat it with chopsticks takab i'm going to eat it with this right here you've got the kailan which is the uh Cantonese broccoli as well m you know I always notice here about the pad seu is there there was less seu you have to add more seu it's they cook it darker in the states but this is one of the dishes that honestly tastes the most similar to America like to American Thai like we said guys wrapping up central Thai food a lot of central Thai things going on royal Thai cuisine that got sort of filtered in there and trickled down to the street level street stall level and then of course a ton of Chinese influences because central Thailand is where the majority I mean obviously every region but majority of where the Chinese immigrants came in Thailand over the past couple hundred years let us know what are some other genres of Thai food that we got to get into but until then I'll tell you this central Thai food is tou it's cheap and good let us know what you think in the comment section below